Chapter LIX: Appendix: A. the Inquisition187 (2)

“And when, after all, they could not procure sufficient evidence to condemn her, though sought after and procured by all their inquisitorial arts, yet as the accused person was born in that place, where they were obliged to give some account of the affair to the people, and indeed could not by any means dissemble it, in the first act of triumph appointed her death, they commanded her sentence to be pronounced in these words: ‘Because this lady died in prison (without doubt suppressing the causes of it), and was found to be innocent upon inspecting and diligently examining her cause, therefore the holy tribunal pronounces her free from all charges brought against her by the fiscal, and absolving her from any further process, doth restore her both as to her innocence and reputation, and commands all her effects, which had been confiscated, to be restored to those to whom they of right belonged,’ etc. And thus, after they had murdered her by torture with savage cruelty, they pronounced her innocent!”[o]

LIMBORCH’S ACCOUNT OF THE FATE OF A JEW

The method of torturing and the degree of tortures used in the Spanish Inquisition will be well understood from the history of Isaac Orobio, a Jew, and doctor of physic, who was accused to the Inquisition as a Jew by a certain Moor, his servant, who had by his order before this been whipped for thieving; and four years after this he was again accused by a certain enemy of his for another fact, which would have proved him a Jew. But Orobio obstinately denied that he was one. I will here give the account of his torture, as I had it from his own mouth. After three whole years which he had been in jail, and several examinations, and the discovery of the crimes to him of which he was accused, in order to his confession and his constant denial of them, he was at length carried out of his jail, and through several turnings brought to the place of torture. This was towards the evening.

It was a large underground room, arched, and the walls covered with black hangings. The candlesticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole room enlightened with candles placed in them. At one end of it there was an enclosed place like a closet, where the inquisitor and notary sat at a table, so that the place seemed to him as the very mansion of death, everything appearing so terrible and awful. Here the inquisitor again admonished him to confess the truth before his torments began.

When he answered he had told the truth, the inquisitor gravely protested that, since he was so obstinate as to suffer the torture, the Holy Office would be innocent, if he should shed his blood, or even expire in his torments. When he had said this, he put a linen garment over his body, and drew it so very close on each side, as almost squeezed him to death. When he was almost dying, they slackened at once the sides of the garment, and after he began to breathe again, the sudden alteration put him to the most grievous anguish and pain. When he had overcome this torture, the same admonition was repeated, that he would confess the truth in order to prevent further torment.

And as he persisted in his denial, they tied his thumbs so very tightly with small cords as made the extremities of them greatly swell, and caused the blood to spurt out from under his nails. After this he was placed with his back against a wall and fixed upon a little bench. Into the wall were fastened little iron pulleys, through which there were ropes drawn, and tied round his body in several places, and especially his arms and legs. The executioner drawing these ropes with great violence, fastened his body with them to the wall so that his hands and feet, and especially his fingers and toes being bound so straightly with them, put him to the most exquisite pain, and seemed to him just as though he had been dissolving in flames. In the midst of these torments the torturer, of a sudden, drew the bench from under him, so that the miserable wretch hung by the cords without anything to support him, and by the weight of his body drew the knots yet much closer.

After this a new kind of torture succeeded. There was an instrument like a small ladder, made of two upright pieces of wood and five cross ones sharpened before. This the torturer placed over against him, and by a certain proper motion struck it with great violence against both his shins, so that he received upon each of them at once five violent strokes, which put him to such intolerable anguish that he fainted away. After he came to himself, they inflicted on him the last torture.

The torturer tied ropes about Orobio’s wrists and then put those ropes about his own back, which was covered with leather, to prevent his hurting himself. Then falling backwards and putting his feet up against the wall, he drew them with all his might till they cut through Orobio’s flesh, even to the very bones; and this torture was repeated thrice, the ropes being tied about his arms about the distance of two fingers’ breadth from the former wound, and drawn with the same violence.

But it happened that, as the ropes were drawing the second time, they slid into the first wound, which caused so great an effusion of blood that he seemed to be dying. Upon this the physician and surgeon, who are always ready, were sent for out of a neighbouring apartment to ask their advice whether the torture could be continued without danger of death, lest the ecclesiastical judges should be guilty of an irregularity if the criminal should die in his torments.

They, who were far from being enemies to Orobio, answered that he had strength enough to endure the rest of the torture, and hereby preserved him from having the tortures he had already endured repeated on him, because his sentence was that he should suffer them all at one time, one after another. So that if at any time they are forced to leave off through fear of death, all the tortures, even those already suffered, must be successively inflicted to satisfy the sentence. Upon this the torture was repeated the third time, and then it ended. After this he was bound up in his own clothes and carried back to his prison, and was scarce healed of his wounds in seventy days. And, inasmuch as he made no confession under his torture, he was condemned, not as one convicted, but suspected of Judaism, to wear for two whole years the infamous habit called _sambenito_, and it was further decreed that after that term he should suffer perpetual banishment from the kingdom of Seville.

OTHER FORMS OF TORTURE

Gonsalvius[o] tells us of another kind of torture. There is a wooden bench, which they call “the wooden horse,” made hollow like a trough, so as to contain a man lying on his back at full length, about the middle of which there is a round bar laid across, upon which the back of the person is placed, so that he lies upon the bar instead of being let into the bottom of the trough, with his feet much higher than his head. As he is lying in this posture, his arms, thighs, and shins are tied round with small cords or strings, which being drawn with screws at proper distance from each other, cut into the very bones, so as to be no longer discerned.

_The Tormento di Toca_

Besides this, the torturer throws over his mouth and nostrils a thin cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through them, and in the meanwhile a small stream of water like a thread, not drop by drop, falls from on high upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable condition and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his throat, so that there is no possibility of breathing, his mouth being stopped with water and his nostrils with the cloth, so that the poor wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing out their last. When this cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is, that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels through his mouth.

_The Chafing-dish; The Water-cure_

There is also another kind of torture peculiar to this tribunal, which they call the fire. They order a large iron chafing-dish full of lighted charcoal to be brought in and held close to the soles of the tortured person’s feet, greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire may more quickly pierce through them.

This is inquisition by torture, when there is only half full proof of their crime. However, at other times torments are sometimes inflicted upon persons condemned to death, as a punishment preceding that of death. Of this we have a remarkable instance in William Lithgow,[w] an Englishman, who, as he tells us in his travels, was taken up as a spy in Malaga, and was exposed to the most cruel torments upon the Wooden Horse. But when nothing could be extorted from him, he was delivered to the Inquisition as an heretic. He was condemned, in the beginning of Lent, to suffer the night following eleven most cruel torments, and after Easter to be carried privately to Grenada, there to be buried at midnight, and his ashes to be scattered into the air; when night came on his fetters were taken off, then he was stripped naked, put upon his knees, and his head lifted up by force; after which, opening his mouth with iron instruments, they filled his belly with water till it came out of his jaws. Then they tied a rope hard about his neck, and in this condition rolled him seven times the whole length of the room, till he almost quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great toes, and hung him up thereby with his head down, letting him remain in this condition till all the water discharged itself out of his mouth, so that he was laid on the ground as just dead, and had his irons put on him again. But beyond all expectation, and by a very singular accident, he was delivered out of jail, escaped death, and fortunately sailed home to England.[b]

Details of another revolting case are quoted by Limborch from an official contemporary document, which may best be reproduced here in its original form.[a]

THE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST AN ENGLISHWOMAN

Elizabeth Vasconcellos, now in the city of Lisbon, doth, on
the 10th day of December, _anno_ 1706, in the presence of John
Milner, Esq., her majesty’s consul-general of Portugal, and
Joseph Willcocks, minister of the English factory at Lisbon,
declare and testify:

That she was born at Arlington, in the county of Devon, and
a daughter of John Chester, Esq., bred up in the church of
England; and in the eleventh year of her age her uncle, David
Morgan, of Cork, intending to go and settle in Jamaica as a
physician, by her father’s consent, he having several children,
took her with him to provide for her.

In 1685, they went in an English ship, and near the island they
were attacked by two Turkish ships; in the fight her uncle was
killed, but the ship got clear into Madeira, and she, though
left destitute, was entertained by Mr. Bedford, a merchant,
with whom, and other English, she lived as a servant till 1696.
In that year she was married by the chaplain of an English
man-of-war to Cordoza de Vasconcellos, a physician of that
island, and lived with him eight years, and never in the least
conformed to the Romish church.

In 1704, her husband being gone on a voyage to Brazil, she fell
dangerously ill, and, being light-headed, a priest gave her
the sacrament, as she was told afterwards, for she remembered
nothing of it. It pleased God she recovered, and then they
told her she had changed her religion, and must conform to the
Romish church, which she denied and refused to conform; and
thereupon, by the bishop of that island, she was imprisoned
nine months, and then sent prisoner to the Inquisition at
Lisbon, where she arrived the 19th of December, 1705. The
secretary of the house took her effects, in all above £500; she
was then sworn, that that was all she was worth, and then put
into a straight dark room, about five feet square, and there
kept nine months and fifteen days.

That the first nine days she had only bread and water, and a
wet straw bed to lie on. On the ninth day, being examined, she
owned herself a Protestant, and would so continue; she was
told she had conformed to the Romish church, and must persist
in it or burn, she was then remanded to her room; and after a
month’s time brought out again, and persisting in her answer
as to her religion, they bound her hands behind her, stripped
her back naked, and lashed her with a whip of knotted cords a
considerable time, and told her afterwards that she must kneel
down to the court, and give thanks for their merciful usage of
her, which she positively refused to do.

After fifteen days she was again brought forth and examined,
and a crucifix being set before her, she was commanded to bow
down to it and worship it, which she refusing to do, they told
her that she must expect to be condemned to the flames, and be
burned with the Jews, at the next _auto da fé_, which was nigh
at hand. Upon this she was remanded to her prison again for
thirty days, and being then brought out, a red hot iron was got
ready, and brought to her in a chafing-dish of burning coals,
and her breast being laid open, the executioner, with one end
of the red hot iron, which was about the bigness of a large
seal, burned her to the bone in three several places, on the
right side, one hard by the other, and then sent her to her
prison, without any plaster, or other application, to heal the
sores, which were very painful to her.

A month after this she had another severe whipping, as before;
and in the beginning of August she was brought before the
table, a great number of inquisitors being present, and was
questioned, whether she would profess the Romish religion or
burn. She replied, she had always been a Protestant, and was a
subject of the queen of England, who was able to protect her,
and she doubted not would do it, were her condition known to
the English residing in Lisbon; but as she knew nothing of
that, her resolution was to continue a Protestant, though she
were to burn for it. To this they answered that her being the
queen of England’s subject signified nothing in the dominions
of the king of Portugal; that the English residing in Lisbon
were heretics, and would certainly be damned; and that it was
the mercy of that tribunal to endeavour to rescue her out of
the flames of hell, but if her resolution were to burn rather
than profess the Romish religion, they would give her a trial
of it beforehand.

Accordingly the officers were ordered to seat her in a fixed
chair, and to bind her arms and her legs, that she could make
no resistance, nor motion, and the physician being placed by
her, to direct the court how far they might torture her without
hazard of life, her left foot was made bare, and an iron
slipper, red hot, being immediately brought in, her foot was
fastened into it, which continued on burning her to the bone,
till such time as by extremity of pain she fainted away, and
the physician declaring her life was in danger, they took it
off, and ordered her again to her prison.

On the 19th of August she was again brought out, and whipped
after a cruel manner, and her back was all over torn, and
being threatened with more and greater tortures, and, on the
other hand, being promised to be set at liberty if she would
subscribe such a paper as they should give her, though she
could have undergone death, yet not being able to endure a
life of so much misery, she consented to subscribe, as they
would have her, and accordingly, as she was directed wrote
at the bottom of a large paper, which contained she knew not
what; after which they advised her to avoid the company of all
English heretics, and not restoring to her anything of all the
plate, goods, or money she brought in with her, and engaging
her by oath to keep secret all that had been done to her,
turned her out of doors, destitute of all relief, but what she
received from the help and compassion of charitable Christians.

The above said Elizabeth Vasconcellos did solemnly affirm and
declare the above written deposition to be true, the day and
year above written.

JOHN MILNER,
JOSEPH WILLCOCKS.

Lisbon, January 8th, 1707, N.S.

(A copy examined from the original, by J. BLISSE.)[b]

INQUISITORIAL DOCUMENTS

That the above affidavit is not a mere party document is only too plainly proved by the very manual of procedure, the Cartilla of the Inquisition at Seville, which W. H. Rule[y] has translated. It was meant for the guidance of all the Spanish inquisitors, and its business-like calm is not its least horrible feature, as is this insistence upon a full report of the torture and its results:[a]

_How the Record was Kept_

“If the criminal is under age, the guardian must be present at pronouncing sentence, in order that he may appeal if he wishes; but he must not be present at the torture.

“All that the criminal says has to be set down, and the questions that were put to him, and his answers, without omitting anything, and how they ordered him to be stripped, and his arms to be bound, and the rounds of cord that are put on him, and how they ordered him to be placed on a rack, and to bind his legs, head, and arms, and how he was bound, and how they ordered the garrotes to be put on, and how they were put on, and how compressed, declaring if it was on leg, thigh, or shin, or arms, etc., and what was said to him at each of these operations.

“If the torture is of pulley, it must be entered how the irons were put; and the weight or weights, and how he was hoisted, and how many times, and how long he was up each time. If it is of rack, it shall be said how the toca[193] was put on him, and how many pitchers of water were thrown over him, and how much each contained.”[y]

_The Proper Form of Torture for Women_

Even more ghastly is the blank form for convenience in recording the various steps. The following from the same manual, as translated by Rule,[y] corroborates the testimony of Elizabeth Vasconcellos quoted above, inasmuch as it prescribes the gentler forms of discipline to be used when the errant one was a woman. There is something peculiarly terrible in the very omission of a special name and the consequent thought of the number of wretches whose vain words and torments were thus recorded.[a]

“She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to strip her. She said, etc. She was commanded to be stripped naked.

“She was told to tell the truth, or orders would be given to cut off her hair. She said, etc.

“Orders were given to cut off her hair; and when it was taken off, she was examined by the doctor and surgeon, who said there was not any objection to her being put to the torture.

“She was told to tell the truth, or she would be commanded to mount the rack. She said, etc.

“She was commanded to mount, and she said, etc.

“She was told to tell the truth, or her body should be bound. She said, etc. She was ordered to be bound.

“She was told to tell the truth, or, if not, they would order her right foot to be made fast for the trampazo.[194] She said, etc. They commanded it to be made fast.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would command her left foot to be made fast for the trampazo. She said, etc. They commanded it to be made fast. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the binding of the right arm to be stretched. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done. And the same with the left arm. It was ordered to be executed.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the fleshy part of her right arm to be made fast for the garrote. She said, etc. It was ordered to be made fast.

“And by the said lord inquisitor it was repeated to her many times that she should tell the truth, and not let herself be brought into so great torment; and the physician and surgeon were called in, who said, etc. And the criminal, etc. And orders were given to make it fast.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the first turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would command the garrote to be applied again to the right arm. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the second turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the garrote to be applied again to the left arm. She said, etc. It was ordered to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the third turn of mancuerda. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

“She was told to tell the truth, or they would order the trampazo to be laid on the right foot. She said, etc. It was commanded to be done.

“For women you do not go beyond this.”[y]

LATER HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN

It would be gratuitously harrowing to multiply such instances of human misery, and we may return to the chronicle of the progress of the Inquisition, leading up to its culmination in Spain and Portugal, instances of whose severity have already been quoted. It is a pitiful chronicle, and one that the humanitarian might well wish to pass over in silence; but one which the historian cannot altogether ignore.[a]

The notion of heresy was enlarged so as to comprehend not only the slightest deviation from the creed of the church, but also usury, sorcery, contempt of the cross and clergy, dealings with Jews, etc.

The people in many places rose up against the inquisitors, as in Albi, and Narbonne (1234), and Toulouse; and in France, where the Inquisition had first been put in force, it was first abolished.[195] The Jesuits sought to restore the Inquisition in Bavaria (1599), and during the Thirty Years’ War found an occasional victim; but Maria Theresa abolished it in her kingdom, and it soon afterwards disappeared in Germany. It had no hold in England, Sweden, Norway, or Denmark; but in Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands it enjoyed a luxuriant growth.[z]

The tribunal, after having been successively adopted in Italy and Germany, was introduced into Aragon, where, in 1242, additional provisions were framed by the Council of Tarragona, on the basis of those of 1233, which may properly be considered as the primitive instructions of the Holy Office in Spain.

This “ancient” Inquisition, as it is termed, bore the same odious peculiarities in its leading features as the modern; the same impenetrable secrecy in its proceedings, the same insidious modes of accusation, a similar use of torture, and similar penalties for the offender. A sort of manual, drawn up by Eymerich,[p] an Aragonese inquisitor of the fourteenth century, for the instruction of the judges of the Holy Office, prescribes all those ambiguous forms of interrogation by which the unwary and perhaps innocent victim might be circumvented. The arm of persecution, however, fell with sufficient heaviness, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the unfortunate Albigenses, who, from the proximity and political relations of Aragon and Provence, had become numerous in the former kingdom. The persecution appears, however, to have been chiefly confined to this unfortunate sect, and there is no evidence that the Holy Office, notwithstanding papal briefs to that effect, was fully organised in Castile before the reign of Isabella. This is perhaps imputable to the paucity of heretics in that kingdom. It cannot, at any rate, be charged to any lukewarmness in its sovereigns; since they, from the time of St. Ferdinand, who heaped the fagots on the blazing pile with his own hands, down to that of John II, Isabella’s father, who hunted the unhappy heretics of Biscay like so many wild beasts among the mountains, had ever evinced a lively zeal for the orthodox faith.

By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Albigensian heresy had been nearly extirpated by the Inquisition of Aragon; so that this infernal engine might have been suffered to sleep undisturbed from want of sufficient fuel to keep it in motion, when new and ample materials were discovered in the unfortunate race of Israel, on whom the sins of their fathers have been so unsparingly visited by every nation in Christendom among whom they have sojourned, almost to the present century.

Under the Visigothic empire the Jews multiplied exceedingly in Spain, and were permitted to acquire considerable power and wealth. But no sooner had their Arian masters embraced the orthodox faith than they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the most pitiless storm of persecution. One of their laws alone condemned the whole race to slavery; and Montesquieu[aa] remarks, without much exaggeration, that to the Gothic code may be traced all the maxims of the Modern Inquisition, the monks of the fifteenth century only copying, in reference to the Israelites, the bishops of the seventh.

_State of the Jews in Spain_

After the Saracenic invasion, which the Jews, perhaps with reason, are accused of having facilitated, they resided in the conquered cities and were permitted to mingle with the Arabs on nearly equal terms. The Jews accordingly, under these favourable auspices, not only accumulated wealth with their usual diligence, but gradually rose to the highest civil dignities, and made great advances in various departments of letters.

The ancient Castilians of the same period, very different from their Gothic ancestors, seem to have conceded to the Israelites somewhat of the feelings of respect which were extorted from them by the superior civilisation of the Spanish Arabs. We find eminent Jews residing in the courts of the Christian princes, directing their studies, attending them as physicians, or more frequently administering their finances. For this last vocation they seem to have had a natural aptitude; and, indeed, the correspondence which they maintained with the different countries of Europe by means of their own countrymen, who acted as the brokers of almost every people among whom they were scattered during the Middle Ages, afforded them peculiar facilities both in politics and commerce. We meet with Jewish scholars and statesmen attached to the courts of Alfonso X, Alfonso XI, Pedro the Cruel, Henry (Enrique) II, and other princes. Their astronomical science recommended them in a special manner to Alfonso el Sabio, who employed them in the construction of his celebrated tables. James I of Aragon condescended to receive instruction from them in ethics; and in the fifteenth century we notice Juan (John) II of Castile employing a Jewish secretary in the compilation of a national _Cancionero_.

But all this royal patronage proved incompetent to protect the Jews when their flourishing fortunes had risen to a sufficient height to excite popular envy, augmented as it was by that profuse ostentation of equipage and apparel for which this singular people, notwithstanding their avarice, have usually shown a predilection. Stories were circulated of their contempt for the Catholic worship, their desecration of its most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children at the celebration of their own passover. With these foolish calumnies, the more probable charge of usury and extortion was industriously preferred against them; till at length, towards the close of the fourteenth century, the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, and perhaps encouraged by the numerous class of debtors to the Jews, who found this a convenient mode of settling their accounts, made a fierce assault on this unfortunate people in Castile and Aragon, breaking into their houses, violating their most private sanctuaries, scattering their costly collections and furniture, and consigning the wretched proprietors to indiscriminate massacre, without regard to sex or age.

_“Conversion” of the Jews_

In this crisis the only remedy left to the Jews was a real or feigned conversion to Christianity. St. Vincent Ferrier, a Dominican of Valencia, performed such a quantity of miracles, in furtherance of this purpose, as might have excited the envy of any saint in the calendar; and these, aided by his eloquence, are said to have changed the hearts of no less than thirty-five thousand of the race of Israel, which doubtless must be reckoned the greatest miracle of all.

The legislative enactments of this period, and still more under Juan II during the first half of the fifteenth century, were uncommonly severe upon the Jews. While they were prohibited from mingling freely with the Christians, and from exercising the professions for which they were best qualified, their residence was restricted within certain prescribed limits of the cities which they inhabited; and they were not only debarred from their usual luxury of ornament in dress, but were held up to public scorn, as it were, by some peculiar badge or emblem embroidered on their garments.

Such was the condition of the Spanish Jews at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella. The “new Christians,” or “converts,” as those who had renounced the faith of their fathers were denominated, were occasionally preferred to high ecclesiastical dignities, which they illustrated by their integrity and learning. They were intrusted with municipal offices in the various cities of Castile; and as their wealth furnished an obvious resource for repairing, by way of marriage, the decayed fortunes of the nobility, there was scarcely a family of rank in the land whose blood had not been contaminated, at some period or other, by mixture with the _mala sangre_, as it came afterwards to be termed, of the house of Judah; an ignominious stain, which no time has been deemed sufficient wholly to purge away.

Notwithstanding the show of prosperity enjoyed by the converted Jews, their situation was far from secure. Their proselytism had been too sudden to be generally sincere; and as the task of dissimulation was too irksome to be permanently endured, they gradually became less circumspect, and exhibited the scandalous spectacle of apostates returning to wallow in the ancient mire of Judaism. The clergy, especially the Dominicans, who seem to have inherited the quick scent for heresy which distinguished their frantic founder, were not slow in sounding the alarm; and the superstitious populace, easily roused to acts of violence in the name of religion, began to exhibit the most tumultuous movements, and actually massacred the constable of Castile in an attempt to suppress them at Jaen, the year preceding the accession of Isabella. After this period the complaints against the Jewish heresy became still more clamorous, and the throne was repeatedly beset with petitions to devise some effectual means for its extirpation (1478).

It is easy to discern, in the medley of credulity and superstition, the secret envy entertained by the Castilians of the superior skill and industry of their Hebrew brethren, and of the superior riches which these qualities secured to them; and it is impossible not to suspect that the zeal of the most orthodox was considerably sharpened by worldly motives.

Be that as it may, the cry against the Jewish abominations now became general. Among those most active in raising it were Alfonso de Ojeda, a Dominican, prior of the monastery of St. Paul in Seville, and Diego de Merlo, assistant of that city, who should not be defrauded of the meed of glory to which they are justly entitled by their exertions for the new establishment of the Modern Inquisition. These persons, after urging on the sovereigns the alarming extent to which the Jewish leprosy prevailed in Andalusia, loudly called for the introduction of the Holy Office, as the only effectual means of healing it. In this they were vigorously supported by Niccolo Franco, the papal nuncio then residing at the court of Castile. Ferdinand listened with complacency to a scheme which promised an ample source of revenue in the confiscations it involved. But it was not so easy to vanquish Isabella’s aversion to such repugnant measures.

_Queen Isabella persuaded to Persecution_

Well had it been for the land if the queen’s conscience had always been intrusted to the keeping of persons of such exemplary piety as her confessor, Talavera. Unfortunately, in her early days, during the lifetime of her brother Henry, that charge was committed to a Dominican monk, Thomas (Tomas) de Torquemada, a native of Old Castile, subsequently raised to the rank of prior of Santa Cruz in Segovia, and condemned to infamous immortality by the signal part which he performed in the tragedy of the Inquisition. This man, who concealed more pride under his monastic weeds than might have furnished forth a convent of his order, was one of that class with whom zeal passes for religion, and who testify their zeal by a fiery persecution of those whose creed differs from their own; who compensate for their abstinence from sensual indulgence by giving scope to those deadlier vices of the heart, pride, bigotry, and intolerance, which are no less opposed to virtue and are far more extensively mischievous to society. This personage had earnestly laboured to infuse into Isabella’s young mind, to which his situation as her confessor gave him such ready access, the same spirit of fanaticism that glowed in his own. Fortunately this was greatly counteracted by her sound understanding and natural kindness of heart. Torquemada urged her, or indeed, as is stated by some, extorted a promise that, “should she ever come to the throne, she would devote herself to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” The time was now arrived when this promise was to be discharged.

It is due to Isabella’s fame to state thus much in palliation of the unfortunate error into which she was led by her misguided zeal; an error so grave that, like a vein in some noble piece of statuary, it gives a sinister expression to her otherwise unblemished character. It was not until the queen had endured the repeated importunities of the clergy, particularly of those reverend persons in whom she most confided, seconded by the arguments of Ferdinand, that she consented to solicit from the pope a bull for the introduction of the Holy Office into Castile. Sixtus IV, who at that time filled the pontifical chair, easily discerning the sources of wealth and influence which this measure opened to the court of Rome, readily complied with the petition of the sovereigns, and expedited a bull bearing date November 1st, 1478, authorising them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics, inquisitors for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout their dominions.

The queen, however, still averse to violent measures, suspended the operation of the ordinance, until a more lenient policy had been first tried. By her command, accordingly, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Mendoza, drew up a catechism exhibiting the different points of the Catholic faith, and instructed the clergy throughout his diocese to spare no pains in illuminating the benighted Israelites, by means of friendly exhortation and a candid exposition of the true principles of Christianity. How far the spirit of these injunctions was complied with, amid the excitement then prevailing, may be reasonably doubted. There could be little doubt, however, that a report, made two years later by a commission of ecclesiastics with Alfonso de Ojeda at its head, respecting the progress of the reformation, would be necessarily unfavourable to the Jews.

In consequence of this report the papal provisions were enforced by the nomination, on the 17th of September, 1480, of two Dominican monks as inquisitors, with two other ecclesiastics, the one as assessor and the other as procurator-fiscal, with instructions to proceed at once to Seville and enter on the duties of their office. Orders were also issued to the authorities of the city to support the inquisitors by all the aid in their power. But the new institution proved so distasteful to them in its origin that they refused any co-operation with its ministers, and during the first years it can scarcely be said to have obtained a footing in any other places in Andalusia than those belonging to the crown.

_The Inquisition of 1481_

On the 2nd of January, 1481, the court commenced operations by the publication of an edict, followed by several others, requiring all persons to aid in apprehending and accusing all such as they might know or suspect to be guilty of heresy, and holding out the illusory promise of absolution to such as should confess their errors within a limited period. As every mode of accusation, even anonymous, was invited, the number of victims multiplied so fast that the tribunal found it convenient to remove its sittings from the convent of St. Paul, within the city, to the spacious fortress of Triana, in the suburbs.

The presumptive proofs by which the charge of Judaism was established against the accused are so curious that a few of them may deserve notice. It was considered good evidence of the fact, if the prisoner wore better clothes or cleaner linen on the Jewish Sabbath than on other days of the week; if he had no fire in his house the preceding evening; if he sat at table with Jews, or ate the meat of animals slaughtered by their hands, or drank a certain beverage held in much estimation by them; if he washed a corpse in warm water, or when dying turned his face to the wall; or, finally, if he gave Hebrew names to his children--a provision most whimsically cruelly, since, by a law of Henry II, he was prohibited under severe penalties from giving them Christian names. He must have found it difficult to extricate himself from the horns of this dilemma.

On the sixth day of January six convicts suffered at the stake. Seventeen more were executed in March, and a still greater number in the month following; and by the 4th of November in the same year no less than 298 individuals had been sacrificed in the _autos da fé_ of Seville. Besides these, the mouldering remains of many, who had been tried and convicted, after their death, were torn up from their graves, with a hyena-like ferocity which has disgraced no other court, Christian or pagan, and condemned to the common funeral pile. This was prepared on a spacious stone scaffold, erected in the suburbs of the city, with the statues of four prophets attached to the corners, to which the unhappy sufferers were bound for the sacrifice. This monument of fanaticism continued to disgrace Seville till 1810, when it was removed in order to make room for the construction of a battery against the French. The sword of justice was observed, in particular, to strike at the wealthy, the least pardonable offenders in times of proscription.

The plague which desolated Seville this year, sweeping off fifteen thousand inhabitants, as if in token of the wrath of heaven at these enormities, did not palsy for a moment the arm of the Inquisition, which, adjourning to Aracena, continued as indefatigable as before. A similar persecution went forward in other parts of the province of Andalusia; so that within the same year, 1481, the number of the sufferers was computed at two thousand burned alive, a still greater number in effigy, and seventeen thousand “reconciled”; a term which must not be understood by the reader to signify anything like a pardon or amnesty, but only the commutation of a capital sentence for inferior penalties, as fines, civil incapacity, very generally total confiscation of property, and not infrequently imprisonment for life.[196]

The Jews were astounded by the bolt which had fallen so unexpectedly upon them. Some succeeded in making their escape to Granada, others to France, Germany, or Italy, where they appealed from the decisions of the Holy Office to the sovereign pontiff.[197] Sixtus IV appears for a moment to have been touched with something like compunction, for he rebuked the intemperate zeal of the inquisitors, and even menaced them with deprivation. But these feelings, it would seem, were but transient; for in 1483 we find the same pontiff quieting the scruples of Isabella respecting the appropriation of the confiscated property, and encouraging both sovereigns to proceed in the great work of purification by an audacious reference to the example of Jesus Christ, who, says he, consolidated his kingdom on earth by the destruction of idolatry.

_The Spanish or “Modern” Inquisition established_

In the course of the same year he expedited two briefs, appointing Thomas de Torquemada inquisitor-general of Castile and Aragon, and clothing him with full powers to frame a new constitution for the Holy Office (August 2nd and October 17th, 1483). This was the origin of that terrible tribunal, the Spanish or Modern Inquisition, familiar to most readers whether of history or romance, which for three centuries extended its iron sway over the dominions of Spain and Portugal.

Edicts were ordered to be published annually, on the first two Sundays in Lent, throughout the churches, enjoining it as a sacred duty on all who knew or suspected another to be guilty of heresy to lodge information against him before the Holy Office; and the ministers of religion were instructed to refuse absolution to such as hesitated to comply with this, although the suspected person might stand in the relation of parent, child, husband, or wife. All accusations, anonymous as well as signed, were admitted; it being only necessary to specify the names of the witnesses, whose testimony was taken down in writing by a secretary, and afterwards read to them, which, unless the inaccuracies were so gross as to force themselves upon their attention, they seldom failed to confirm.

Not the least odious feature of the whole was the connection established between the condemnation of the accused and the interests of his judges; since the confiscations, which were the uniform penalties of heresy, were not permitted to flow into the royal exchequer until they had first discharged the expenses, whether in the shape of salaries or otherwise, incident to the Holy Office. The most humane provisions were constantly evaded in practice; and the toils for ensnaring the victim were so ingeniously multiplied that few, very few, were permitted to escape without some censure. Not more than one person, says Llorente, in one or perhaps two thousand processes, previous to the time of Philip III, received entire absolution. So that it came to be proverbial that all who were not roasted were at least singed:

“_Devant l’Inquisition, quand on vient à jubé,_
_Si l’on ne sort rôti, l’on sort au moins flambé._”

_The “Auto da fé”_

The last scene in this dismal tragedy was the “act of faith” (_auto da fé_),[198] the most imposing spectacle, probably, which has been witnessed since the ancient Roman triumph, and which, as intimated by a Spanish writer, was intended, somewhat profanely, to represent the terrors of the Day of Judgment. The proudest grandees of the land, on this occasion, putting on the sable livery of familiars of the Holy Office and bearing aloft its banners, condescended to act as the escort of its ministers; while the ceremony was not unfrequently countenanced by the royal presence. It should be stated, however, that neither of these acts of condescension--or, more properly, humiliation--was witnessed until a period posterior to Isabella’s reign. The effect was further heightened by the concourse of ecclesiastics in their sacerdotal robes, and pompous ceremonial which was intended to consecrate, as it were, this bloody sacrifice by the authority of a religion which has expressly declared that it desires mercy and not sacrifice.[199]

The most important actors in the scene were the unfortunate convicts, who were now disgorged for the first time from the dungeons of the tribunal. They were clad in coarse woollen garments, styled _san benitos_, brought close round the neck and descending like a frock down to the knees. These were of yellow colour, embroidered with a scarlet cross, and well garnished with figures of devils and flames of fire, which, typical of the heretic’s destiny hereafter, served to make him more odious in the eyes of the superstitious multitude.[200] The greater part of the sufferers were condemned to be “reconciled,” the manifold meanings of which soft phrase have been already explained. Those who were to be “relaxed,” as it was called, were delivered over, as impenitent heretics, to the secular arm, in order to expiate their offence by the most painful of deaths, with the consciousness, still more painful, that they were to leave behind them names branded with infamy, and families involved in irretrievable ruin.[201]

It is remarkable that a system so monstrous as that of the Inquisition, presenting the most effectual barrier, probably, that was ever opposed to the progress of knowledge, should have been revived at the close of the fifteenth century, when the light of civilisation was rapidly advancing over every part of Europe. It is more remarkable that it should have occurred in Spain, at this time under a government which had displayed great religious independence on more than one occasion, and which had paid uniform regard to the rights of its subjects and pursued a generous policy in reference to their intellectual culture. Where, we are tempted to ask, when we behold the persecution of an innocent, industrious people for the crime of adhesion to the faith of their ancestors--where was the charity which led the old Castilian to reverence valour and virtue in an infidel, though an enemy, where the chivalrous self-devotion which led an Aragonese monarch, three centuries before, to give away his life in defence of the persecuted sectaries of Provence, where the independent spirit which prompted the Castilian nobles, during the very last reign, to reject with scorn the purposed interference of the pope himself in their concerns, that they were now reduced to bow their necks to a few frantic priests, the members of an order which, in Spain at least, was quite as conspicuous for ignorance as intolerance? True, indeed, the Castilians, and the Aragonese subsequently still more, gave such evidence of their aversion to the institution, that it can hardly be believed the clergy would have succeeded in fastening it upon them, had they not availed themselves of the popular prejudices against the Jews.[202] Providence, however, permitted that the sufferings thus heaped on the heads of this unfortunate people should be requited in full measure to the nation that inflicted them. The fires of the Inquisition, which were lighted exclusively for the Jews, were destined eventually to consume their oppressors. They were still more deeply avenged in the moral influence of this tribunal, which, eating like a pestilent canker into the heart of the monarchy at the very time when it was exhibiting a most goodly promise, left it at length a bare and sapless trunk.

_Torquemada and his Successors_

Notwithstanding the persecutions under Torquemada were confined almost wholly to the Jews, his activity was such as to furnish abundant precedent, in regard to forms of proceeding, for his successors; if, indeed, the word forms may be applied to the conduct of trials so summary that the tribunal of Toledo alone, under the superintendence of two inquisitors, disposed of 3,327 processes in little more than a year. The number of convicts was greatly swelled by the blunders of the Dominican monks, who acted as qualificators or interpreters of what constituted heresy, and whose ignorance led them frequently to condemn, as heterodox, propositions actually derived from the fathers of the church. The prisoners for life, alone, became so numerous that it was necessary to assign them their own houses as the places of their incarceration.

The data for an accurate calculation of the number of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition during this reign are not very satisfactory. From such as exist, however, Llorente has been led to the most frightful results. In this enormous sum of human misery is not included the multitude of orphans, who, from the confiscation of their paternal inheritance, were turned over to indigence and vice.[203] Many of the reconciled were afterwards sentenced as relapsed; and the curate of Los Palacios[cc] expresses the charitable wish that “the whole accursed race of Jews, male and female, of twenty years of age and upwards, might be purified with fire and fagot!”[204]

The vast apparatus of the Inquisition involved so heavy an expenditure, that a very small sum comparatively, found its way into the exchequer, to counterbalance the great detriment resulting to the state from the sacrifice of the most active and skilful part of its population. All temporal interests, however, were held light in comparison with the purgation of the land from heresy; and such augmentations as the revenue did receive, we are assured, were conscientiously devoted “to pious purposes and the Moorish war”![205]

The Roman see is charged with duplicity, characteristic of Alexander VI, in making a gainful traffic by the sale of dispensations from the penalties incurred by such as fell under the ban of the Inquisition, provided they were rich enough to pay for them, and afterwards revoking them, at the instance of the Castilian court. Meanwhile, the odium excited by the unsparing rigour of Torquemada raised up so many accusations against him that he was thrice compelled to send an agent to Rome to defend his cause before the pontiff; until, at length, Alexander VI, in 1494, moved by these reiterated complaints, appointed four coadjutors, out of a pretended regard to the infirmities of his age, to share with him the burdens of his office.

This personage, who is entitled to so high a rank among those who have been the authors of unmixed evil to their species, was permitted to reach a very old age, and to die quietly in his bed. Yet he lived in such constant apprehension of assassination that he is said to have kept a reputed unicorn’s horn always on his table, which was imagined to have the power of detecting and neutralising poisons; while, for the more complete protection of his person, he was allowed an escort of fifty horse and two hundred foot in his progresses through the kingdom.

This man’s zeal was of such an extravagant character that it may almost shelter itself under the name of insanity. His history may be thought to prove that of all human infirmities, or rather vices, there is none productive of more extensive mischief to society than fanaticism. The opposite principle of atheism, which refuses to recognise the most important sanctions to virtue, does not necessarily imply any destitution of just moral perceptions, that is, of a power of discriminating between right and wrong, in its disciples. But fanaticism is so far subversive of the most established principles of morality, that, under the dangerous maxim, “For the advancement of the faith, all means are lawful,” which Tasso has rightly, though perhaps undesignedly, derived from the spirits of hell, it not only excuses, but enjoins the commission of the most revolting crimes as a sacred duty. The more repugnant, indeed, such crimes may be to natural feeling or public sentiment, the greater their merit, from the sacrifice which the commission of them involves. Many a bloody page of history attests the fact that fanaticism armed with power is the sorest evil which can befall a nation.[m]